The present invention relates, in general, to the field of air bearing surface ("ABS") slider designs for use in conjunction with data transducers in rotating media random access computer mass storage devices. More particularly, the present invention relates to a textured ABS design of especial applicability in devices which utilize an air bearing surface to control the flying height or spacing between two relatively moving surfaces such as in conjunction with the read/write elements in a hard disk drive.
Lowering the flying height of a slider carrying a data transducer in conjunction with a rotating computer mass storage element such as a disk is necessary to allow for the reading or writing of data which is stored with ever increasing areal density. In turn, this lowered flying height has resulted in the exacerbation of two critical tribological parameters. Firstly, a high degree of slider-to-media stiction is encountered when the heads are parked which might prevent the sliders carrying the read/write elements from separating from the media surface upon initial drive start-up rendering them unworkable. Secondly, severe contact start/stop ("CSS") conditions and concomitant head and media wear may be experienced due to the decrease in the slider flying height and the trend toward ever faster media rotational speeds.
Heretofore, a number of differing approaches have been attempted with respect to ameliorating the problems of slider stiction and contact start/stop encountered due to ever decreasing slider flying heights and increasing media rotation speed. Among these have been the use of a ramp loading technique, the use of padded sliders and the provision of transversely textured media.
The first approach involves the provision of a ramp loading of the sliders and access arms to the media surface. However, this technique has generally not proven satisfactory and its use has been predominantly limited to hard disk drives having a 2.5 inch form factor. Moreover, due to the tight mechanical tolerance of the ramps required within the drive head disk assembly ("HDA"), this technique of necessity limits the number of disk media that can be incorporated in a particular drive design for a given form factor. Other problems include the necessity for providing the additional ramp components and modified suspension designs, the requirement for entirely new servo function algorithms and the uncertainty regarding the tribology of the ramp and suspension elements. Importantly, such a design fails if the sliders accidentally impact with or land on the media surfaces.
The use of padded sliders has also been attempted but the technique is not as yet fully mature in the disk drive industry and is currently not a satisfactory solution. Importantly, it worsens the contact stop/start performance due to the protruding pads and it performs poorly in higher revolution per minute ("RPM") designs which can result in severe pad wear and potentially cause high stiction problems.
Finally, the use of transversely textured media is, again, not yet a fully mature technology and it requires the design and implementation of an entirely new manufacturing process to produce such textured media. Still further, the technique requires more research in order to fully optimize the texture design in order to minimize the risk of high slider-to-media stiction.